Thursday, September 30, 2010

When we were in Seattle this summer we had a fabulous smoked salmon chowder for lunch one day at Pike Place Market. It had capers in it which seemed unusual but really added a great salty tang. Now that soup weather has hit here in MN we decided to take a stab at making it ourselves.
Really the recipe is a pretty basic chowder recipe yet, the smokey flavor of the salmon & with the capers takes it to another level. It's not too heavy a chowder but, it has a real richness. This is a soup that comes together in 30 - 40 minutes making it a quick, satisfying lunch or dinner.

I was going to buy smoked salmon to make this soup but since we have so much Alaskan salmon in the freezer we decided to try smoking our own. Instead of pulling out the smoker we used one of the smoker bags we had left from out apartment days.(Our smoker bags came from Williams-Sonoma but you can easily find them online like these on Amazon)

These bags turn your oven or grill into a smoker for about a pound of meat, fish or vegetables at a time. We've found they really do give the food a great smokey flavor (& your house will smell like an amazing bbg too). All I did to smoke the salmon was put a filet that in the bag, seal it up & put it in a 350 F preheated oven for 1 hour. The salmon came out fully cooked, flakey, moist & smokey. I didn't season it at all but it would be fun to experiment with putting sauces like teriyaki or maple on before smoking. This isn't exactly like the smoked salmon you buy in stores, which is most likely cold smoked, but its perfect for recipes like this. We plan on trying it again to use in pasta or a lentil salad.